Michigan

Spartans feeling sick after UCLA loss

AP PhotoUCLA's Kevin Love, left, looks for a teammate as he is pressured by Michigan State's Drew Naymick during the championship game of the CBE Classic college basketball tournament. UCLA won, 68-63.

By Steve Grinczel

KANSAS CITY -- Losing is a fact of basketball life, even for Michigan State.

But failing to play the Spartan way is unacceptable even in a close loss against a top-ranked team.

Coach Tom Izzo underscored that point after MSU lost to UCLA, 68-63, in the championship game of the O'Reilly Auto Parts CBE Classic at the Sprint Center on Tuesday night.

UCLA is tied with North Carolina for the No. 1 spot in the ESPN/USA Today Coaches poll. The Spartans, ranked 10th in the Associated Press poll, led most of the game and didn't trail until forward Luc Richard Mbah a Moute's 3-point field goal gave the Bruins a decisive 66-63 lead with 33 seconds remaining.

It was no mystery to Izzo why Michigan State (3-1) let a 13-point lead late in the first half slip away, and senior guard Drew Neitzel's day-long, stomach flu was only part of the problem.

Neitzel didn't have anything to do with four big men getting in serious foul trouble or UCLA collecting 22 offensive rebounds against a program whose trademark under Izzo has been rebounding and defense.

The Spartans had just seven offensive boards and were outrebounded overall, 37-28.

"It's an insult to me and the players who played before us that we gave up the offensive rebounds that we did and that will change," Izzo said while pounding his finger into a table during the postgame interview. "The program isn't at the point where we're going to accept, 'We gave it the old college effort.'

"I'm not into that. We got beat on an effort-related stat that should never happen. That's enough for me to be sick."

UCLA (5-0) isn't the team everyone expected it to be because preseason All-American guard Darren Collison has been sidelined with a knee injury since before the opener.

The Spartans also were less than full strength because their preseason All-American, Neitzel, spent the day in bed. He didn't start but came in for the first time with 14:36 left in the first half.

Nevertheless, he led MSU with 13 points on 4-for-11 shooting from the field in 25 minutes and was named to the all-tournament team.

"It was a struggle," said Neitzel, who missed the shoot-around and two of three meetings. "I started feeling a little better by game-time but still had a lot of body aches and chills.

"I wasn't able to eat anything all day so I didn't have a ton of energy, but I felt better than I thought I would."

Until, that is, the Spartans lost.

"It's really disappointing because you don't get the chance to play the No. 1 team every day," Neitzel said. "It's over and we've got to learn from it and move on but it definitely does hurt because we did have them down and had a chance to put them away, but we didn't play the way we wanted to and let them back in it."

Spartans freshman forward Durrell Summers came off the bench to score 11 points. Sophomore forward Raymar Morgan scored all 10 of his points in the first half and then was limited by foul trouble.

"He has very good footwork and knows how to draw contact and (the referees) were calling a pretty tight game," Naymick said. "Our big men not adjusting to that hurt us. We have to do a better job against a guy like that and a better job on the glass.

"We got killed on offensive rebounds especially in the second half, and that's not going to let you win the game."